Obama administration moving on seven renewable energy projects

8/7/12 11:40 AM EDT

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that seven renewable energy projects on public lands across four Western states would be “expedited.”

The projects will produce almost 5,000 megawatts from wind as well as solar energy in Wyoming, California, Arizona and Nevada. Three projects are expected to complete their federal permitting process as early as December.

The single largest project in the suite is a 3,000-megawatt wind farm in Wyoming called the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Farm Project by the Power Company of Wyoming. The Interior Department said it expects to complete the federal permitting process for the largest proposed wind farm in North America by October 2014, according to a White House statement.

The remaining six projects include Mohave Wind Energy by BP Wind, Quartzsite Solar Energy by Solar Reserve, Desert Harvest Solar Energy by enXco, McCoy Solar Energy by NextEra, Moapa Solar Energy Center by RES Americas, and Silver State South by First Solar. RES Americas’s center in Nevada is being jointly developed on public lands as well as the Moapa River Indian Reservation.

The White House said streamlining the review process is part of a wider administration effort to make the permitting for infrastructure projects more efficient while also protecting the environment.

Additional expedited infrastructure projects will be announced in “the coming weeks,” according to the White House.